Wednesday Night Open Thread

Update: Matt and Lil Rounds in bottom two. I think Matt should go home. Update: Matt's at the bottom, and the Judges save him -- Simon very reluctantly. The other six cheer. Why? Now two will get sent home next week. This new "save" business is silly.

I see the Obamas filed their tax return. The White House has released it here (pdf). Aside from his high income, I find it interesting that Malia's and Sasha's tuition for the year cost $47,000. President Obama also announced plans to simply the tax code to remove the dread from April 15.

or "Britain's Got Talent," as they call the teevee show there. Anyone else seen Susan Boyle's amazing debut, the Youtube that has gone as wild as the judges and crowd did for the aging virgin, never been kissed, who was mocked by the crowd for her looks -- until she started to sing? Terrific.

it was amazing - I had chills when she opened her mouth and that beautiful voice came out.

I loved the change in the faces of the judges and the members of the audience - all of whom were expecting the worst - and I guess the feeling of triumph I felt was in hoping these people had learned something about why judging people on their looks is not always the best way to go.

for a large audience. Not only did she perform for the large audience attending Britain's Got Talent and people watching on TV but over 15.9 million people (3 hours ago) viewed her performance on You Tube.

Definitely a learning experience and a triumph of talent and determination.

The world needed a touch of what's real right now. I thought she had a special joy inside her during the introductory interviews (backstage and on stage). She did not show any uneasiness in who she is at all.

People who judge by appearance miss a great deal in life, IMHO.

Her voice was going to knock people over in amazement no matter what she looked like.

Simon had her in negotiations with his record label immediately following her performance according to the original reports several days ago. I'll certainly buy her first release.

for me lately, must be some software update or something that's screwing up my computer. And I didn't want to do one of those naughty long URLs to put you through telling me not to do one of those naughty long URLs.:-)

last night and wasn't paying much attention except to glance at the screen, and figured they were just going to make fun of her-- and then the first notes came out of her mouth. That is one smooth and creamy and wonderful voice, with perfect control, from what I could hear. She also didn't over-emote, which was a fabulous change.

When I first saw the clip and watched the judges and audience reactions grow from dismissal to grand acceptance I swear the smile on my face was from ear to ear and then some. What a gift she has given to everyone - first her voice and then the lesson to never, ever judge a book by its cover...

that we were required to remove our studded snow tires. Anybody else remember those? That always was a guarantee of a monster snow storm to follow, as late as a few days before May.

It's April that goes out like a lion in some of our climes. Just looked at the Denver forecast -- now saying up to 20 inches . . . or not, with the difficulty in forecasting temps at this time of year. If not, that will be a LOT of rain -- or worse, that "wintry mix" of muck from the sky.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden. GREAT prices. A 4 night photography class only $120 for non members. It's shooting at dusk, so it should be interesting for me :) Also signed up for Urban Herbs which will be held at the start of their plant sale. It's also during the week so I'll wander the garden after with my camera (plants in tow, lol!~) The last one I'm hoping to take is Vegetables in Containers. Hmmm, just remember I signed up for cooking classes this AM. I have classes set up for May June and July now and when I woke up this morning I had no idea I would be doing this!

excitement after classes. I like to share fun things I've learned {grin}. I'm super excited about the photography class. I was just looking for classes in growing and skimming over the drawing/poetry/flower gardening stuff and the dusk photography class luckily jumped out at me :)

Now if I was really smart, I would be studying for my written drivers test and looking for driving classes. I'm moving in 6mos . . . . lol!~

{Thanks the Spotty B!tch in the Sky for the preview screen} Man, I had some darn funny typos in there, lol!~

or at least the front part, with the help of a friend who's a handyman and has done it a couple times before. What a nasty, tedious job scraping the old paint off is!

We discovered under the paint that the clapboards on my old house are oak, though, which was a very nice surprise and explains why they're in such good shape overall. The previous paint job, though, not so much. The previous owners apparently used no primer and just slapped cheap paint on. Plus they had crummy-looking decorative shutters at all the windows and lots of big heavy old (ugly) shrubs right up against the house, so the paint has been peeling prematurely from all the trapped moisture. The shutters are now languishing in the barn and I took out the very sickly lilacs and other shrubs.

Anybody here ever painted their house? This is my first, so I'd be grateful for any advice/tips, etc. We're using Benjamin Moore oil-based primer, and terrific high-quality (red) finish paint from the extensive construction materials recycling center up in Burlington, which costs only $9 a gallon for a five-gallon pail!

Just wondering if you blasted steam over it, the scrapping would be more like cleaning off vs muscle power? When I moved into my place many years ago, I removed a century worth of interior paint off the woodwork. O.M.G. what a freakin' project. And then there were the floors! I can't imagine the outside of a house. Oy. While I don't mind the exercise, I think there is a reasonable limit!

My Parents had the outside wood of the cabin re-stained/sealed recently, so thankfully, that job is not in my future. The inside . . . mostly surface cosmetic, YES!!!!! Any thoughts of just sealing up your oak exterior instead of painting? That's basically what I did with the floors here (wood, then painted, then linoleum for a few years with a couple rooms being "tarred/waterproofed" at some point before the next layer.) After I had removed a century, it was, stain and seal. I honestly couldn't start putting back what I took off, lol!~

a hot idea with exterior clapboards. The last thing you want to do is drive moisture into the wood, is my understanding.

Same thing with pressure-washing, which isn't even necessary out in open countryside. I think that's more of a suburban thing. I have no traffic, no soot, no cursed Norway Maples dripping whatever sticky mess it is they drip. The walls are quite clean, except for the part under the roof of the front stoop, where rain and our nearly constant breeze don't reach, but we'll do that small section with bucket and brush or the like.

Hadn't considered sealing, but if that means having unpainted weathered wood-- no thanks. That would be vastly much more work to get every tiny speck of paint off. And besides, I like my little red house!

We're not doing the whole house, either, just the front. If the budget and my friend's timeline hold out, we may do the one other wall that needs work, or I may wait until next spring for that.

My north and west walls are in good shape. It's the south and east that had all the sucky shrubs. West and north are buffeted by breezes and winds year-round with no obstruction, so no moisture lasts on them and only the bits under the old shutters show any signs of deterioration.

(although I specialized in interiors) I would advise you to pressure wash the entire exterior really well. Let it dry out over a couple of days. Then do any necessary scraping that remains.

Your choice of Benjamin Moore products is excellent. If you are topcoating in red then you really should have the primer tinted to gray. It will help immensely with topcoat coverage! Also, while you are using an oil primer for the undercoat, I would not advise an oil topcoat on either the body of the house or the trimwork. Their latex exterior topcoats are quite good.

And only use the blue tape, not green tape!

Finally, be careful. Don't overextend your body on ladders. Only do what you can do without danger of hurting yourself.

Some of which I'm doing, so good to know that's the right thing. I think the primer we got is red. Is gray better for a red topcoat? If so, why? (We've got white primer for the white trim, though.) And yes, oil primer but latex topcoat.

Why blue and not green tape? What's the diff there?

I'm a bit lucky in that this is an old and very modest and sort of clunky little farmhouse, so perfection in any of it is not only unnecessary but out of character! And with zero foot traffic on my out-of-the-way country road, nobody ever gets closer to the house than 30 feet or so anyway except for the area around the back door. So I have plenty of room for minor cosmetic errors. In fact, I was amazed at how crummy the previous owners' last paint job was when I got nose to nose with it because I'd just never noticed it from a little distance.

I'm going nowhere near any ladders, either! My friend is doing the ladder part on one side while I work the stuff I can reach from the ground on the other side.

The reasons for gray primer are that it hides repairs and glitches really well, and it is a neutral color over which all bold-colored paints (reds, deep greens and blues) will look uniformly solid and not have to be topcoated too many times. Red is the hardest color get to cover well, indoors or out. Benj. Moore will almost always tint the primer to the topcoat color unless you request otherwise. I think you'll be just fine.

Glad to hear the fivers are re-blended Benj. Moore as well.

The problem with the green tape is that it is thin and tears when you remove it after painting.

An old farm house just HAS to be painted red, doesn't it? Have fun with the project.

This is a very modest house-- orginally a "cheese house" that was moved here by horses and big rolling tree trunks sometime around 1900-- that doesn't even have enough character to be ungainly, so its red color is pretty much the only exterior distinction it has. House numbers have no significance out here, either, so my house is widely know as "the little red house on X Road," and I kinda like that!

The project isn't a whole lot of fun, but it will be a relief to give the place back a modicum of dignity by fixing its peeling paint and giving it a handsome new set of clothes to face the world in.

really very high quality, mostly leftover Benjamin Moore and the like, reblended. I know a number of people who've used it and have been ecstatic with the results. When you're talking about a whole house, the price difference is absolutely HUGE.

Don't forget, MO lamented about their 10 grand in outside activities when she was trying to relate to the working class's "pain". My rent is less than that per YEAR. (And it was even lower when she said it. Darn rent hikes!*)

*All of us that have lived in the same apt more than 6yrs got slammed this year.

Being a professor can come with a lot of perks. Back in the day, they used to pay for your kids to go to college too. And not just at the U of Chicago. Full disclosure - my dad went to the lab school that way. He said it's a shame they had to leave as it is a very good school. Although I imagine the one they are at now is just fine.

of free tuition for faculty (and staff) kids for college and for private K-12 schools on campus -- but for fulltime faculty (and staff). Obama never was that. So I would be surprised if the Obamas got the schooling for free. On the other hand, they may have had a parttimers' discount -- or the school may have made other arrangements for the luster of having his daughters there.

Btw, most states also offer similar tuition freebies or discounts at their public universities for fulltime faculty and staff. But not mine. There is something to be said for it, as I feel the pain of other parents and students paying the same as we do. And even more next fall. . . .

Seriously needs to be dealt with. Btw - what do you think of this proposal? Cutting out the middle-men in student loans would certainly help the gov't costs - but would it actually make a difference to students? I don't know how you control the costs of actual school, but I think that is more important than loan restructuring (although that is still important). We need students to graduate with less debt not better debt.

of college, so that students have a choice of an education that is affordable, is called . . . public support. Through taxes. That's why public colleges and universities were invented in this great land of ours, aka land-grant (state) universities.

Since the conservative revolution, nationally and in my state -- one with one of the great public university systems -- public support has dropped so low that the education is now not affordable for many students. That's what the public wanted.

And it's what the public still wants in my state. You get what you pay for, so my state ranks poorly now in educational levels attained -- and thus in income levels.

Next door to us is another state that, at the start of the conservative revolution, matched us in educational levels attained and in income levels. It opted to invest taxes in its public university system in those recent decades, while my state's support declined. So that state next door soared in those measures of educational and income levels, and it became an economic magnet for private r&d -- research and development -- investment.

Guess which state now is suffering far more from the current economic depression -- as it is now, by jobless measures and the like, a depression in the state where the public decided to so radically cut back on public higher education.

In sum, historically, the number-one form of financial aid is public support of public higher education, through state colleges and universities. We can learn from that history, or we can continue to ignore it and pretend that the way to make education affordable is to privatize it, i.e., through private lenders.

public university systems. It now has one great campus, only because that campus does not serve as many in-state students and goes for the far higher out-of-state tuition.

By comparison, the campus in the system that serves the most in-state students -- my campus -- is starving for funds and has been for decades. The national study of salaries, for example, just is out this week and shows that the faculty are in the lowest percentile, the lowest 20%, of pay nationally as a result of the starving of the campus. And it is getting worse by the day, with budget cutbacks. And it will lose its future good faculty, the younger ones, because the governor (a Dem) has decided that there will be no raises for the next two years.

There 'tis; turns out it makes no difference whether a state has a Repub or a Dem governor, when what the public wants is to no longer support state colleges and universities.

"The president's proposal," Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida, said in a floor speech, "could be detrimental to thousands of employees who serve in the current student loan industry throughout this country, 650 of which are located in Panama City, Florida."

I would worry more about the people receiving the money than employees of the lending industry.
but thats just me.

We were talking college tuition last night at dinner. 2 of the guys have 5yos at home. I sure hope something changes in the next few years. I can't imagine how hard this must be for some (most?) parents. I always joked when I had pets instead of kids, that I didn't have to deal with teenagers or college tuition. Joke's not so funny anymore . . .

as they often lead to such kids pulling down big college scholarships -- merit-based, not need-based. I've seen it happen with the elite school in my community. Parents pay now for the top colleges to pay the tuition later, plus the kids get into top colleges. Heck, if I'd had the money (instead of still paying for my own college tuition and then loans), I would have looked into it for my kids. Pay now, pay later, you're gonna pay, and this way, they get into top colleges.

Not to mention that if the girls want to go to Columbia or Harvard (or a couple of other colleges, I think, with Occidental as their father's first college, and their mother's almae mater, too) -- they will be legacies. They might as well already be enrolled in classes yet to be scheduled.

In and around DC cost $20,000 to $30,000 a year, and they have long waiting lists! It's amazing how many people want out of public schools and are willing to pay the big bucks.

I feel sorry for the poor black kids in DC who couldn't get out and finally got vouchers so that some of them could go to schools like the one that the President's children go to. And now some want to make them go back to the really bad DC schools. They should be punished like that just because they are black and poor. Two of Malia and Sasha's classmates are going to have to leave their school, because of the new Sec of Education doing away with their vouchers. That's just wrong. Those poor black kids should be able to go to that school, just like rich kids can do. This really angers me, and the Washington Post agrees with me.

beware, and see the first solid, long-term studies of the effects in the first city with a sizeable voucher system. No measurable impact on the kids' education, no better than public schools -- even though the voucher system devastated the public schools and the city, with the strain on its residents in paying for two parallel systems . . . paying more than $1000 extra per voucher student, as mandated on them but not funded by the anti-urban state legislators and governor. Nor did they mandate any accountability.

The only real benefit has been to the Catholic church, using that money to build big new additions on schools that were going to be closed, and to the fly-by-night scammers that set up storefront schools without books or teachers who had at least completed college or even high school. And look to the backing of the voucher system from the start -- arch-conservative foundations and the Catholic archdiocese.

when Obama was a bit busy. But now he gets to be what we call "between books," which does allow some latitude in preliminary research for the next one, even if not yet the writing (or ghost-writing, whichever, but that wouldn't have been in 2008, either). However, at his income level and with his visibility for every Repub looking for scandal, he was wise to not attempt such business expenses. Those can be hard to explain: "Uh, I took that trip for a book I'm still thinking about doing in 2012 or 2016, whichever" -- and who would believe he had time for a research trip last year? It was hard enough to find time for the couple of family vacations as well as the trip to bury his grandmother. And if he had spent a day in a library, the media would have known.:-)

"research assistants" (cough!) you employ in writing your book, how much travel you "have to" do yourself to do your own research, etc. I think some of these guys can manage to spend a very large amount of dough in "writing" their books. Good for him if he didn't go that route.

But he did get a boost in royalties, um, sorry, sales, due to the year that it was. It should be all gravy at this point, right? And how many "research assistants" do you need to write your life story/thoughts twice?

As a commercial artist, I've spent many years doing the "business" tax thang. I would love to get his royalties (I could actually afford the tax on it!), especially if I designed something a year or more prior. But I would also laugh if someone said high income, low expenses. And feel damn lucky. But then again, I'm used to working my a** off for my money, not having royalties show up in those kinda sums :) I honestly don't think he could have gone the 'cough' route. He was too visible by choice {understatement}.

we get it a few days later. And we're finally going to see 60 this week. Of course, that always happens before the last, late-April storm of the year. I was just dreaming of actually being able to get out the other sort of shovel, the sort for the garden. Sigh.

for the stadium opener. Not like we'll be outside much though, lol!~ It will be a beautiful day for pictures :) Then on to 70 Friday, so I think I'll wander the 'hood and hit the new butcher that carries all grass fed to see what he has and my fav mom n' pop cooking store. Sat will hit 73 {happy dance}

It's been "April-showering" here for the last two and a half days - we really needed the rain - but it's supposed to be nice tomorrow through the weekend, so that will be quite welcome. I love Spring here in the mid-Atlantic, but it is ever so much better with sunshine!

around May 10. I always remember it because it's a friend's birthday and very close to Mother's Day. But it's usually a day thing and then we are done.

Usually we get lots of snow in March, hardly any in April and then once in May. This year we got none in March -- it's all in April.

It's a nuisance for things like knowing when to turn the outside water back on to start sprinking the law. Usually it's late March, but I haven't done it yet since it's still snowing frequently. And I've never gone from heat to air-conditioning as early as I did this year. Usually I don't do that until April, but we've had so many 75 degree days I've had to keep switching between them.

Had a guy take a nicked-up blue Schwinn frame and build me a custom bike from it. It's hunter green with a black spring-mounted seat and black grips on cruiser handlebars. Has a kickstand, a bullet-style headlight and a flashing LED tail-light, and whitewall 700 tires. It's a 3-speed with twist-style shifter and a Shimano Nexus internal-hub coaster brake. And an old-fashioned bicycle bell!

Thanks for the inspiration. I've re-created the best of my 1950s childhood bicycling experience, with a few modern bangles and bows. Think I'll go out and get a Christmas tree and park this rolling work of art under it.

How awful for all of you who have had so much snow this winter. I also read it was the coldest winter ever in the East. Is this cold weather because of Global Warming or something else? Whatever it is, it stinks. :(

I'd support a regime where taxes are assessed against total income from all sources with no deductions, exemptions or credits or distinctions between earned and unearned income. (I would keep the rollover exemption for gains realized from the sale of a primary residence rolled over into a new primary residence.)

Where I depart, though is that I would then establish very progressive marginal tax rates. I don't have the knowledge necessary to establish brackets and rates whivch would achieve approximate revenue neutrality but I'd begin with a 1% rate against income below say $5-10,000, gradually escalating to a rate of 90% on income above a very high amount of say $10-20,000,000.

That would result in a much simpler system but without the absurdly regressive nature of the "flat tax."

But any tax reform talk is mute until we tackle spending...first ya need to know how much money ya need to best figure out the best way to raise that sum...hard to do when some government agencies have unlimited and confidential budgets. We've been doing it backwards...they set a tax code and then spend it all and them some...no good.

Uncle Sam needs to come up with a fairly firm yearly budget number, then we can talk about the fairest, simplest, least tyrannical way to raise that number.

Shore Bancshares Inc., the Easton-based holding company of three banks on the Eastern Shore, said Wednesday that it repaid $25 million to the federal bank bailout program, buying back 25,000 preferred shares it had sold to the U.S. Treasury. The lender also paid accrued dividends of $208,333, according to a prepared statement. The company filed a notice last month with the Treasury to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The company said then that the terms of TARP had changed and that the public wrongly views banks as weak if they accept public funds. Other banks also have returned funds.

The Justice Department has invoked the state secrets privilege in a bid to get a California federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against National Security Agency electronic surveillance.

Department lawyers filed a memorandum to U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker last Friday urging him to dismiss the lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA. It argued that litigating the case would require disclosure of classified information protected by the privilege.

The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are alleging that the NSA has surveilled not only the communications of suspected terrorists, but the telephone calls and emails of millions of Americans.

But the Justice Department -- buttressed by public and classfied declarations from Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and NSA Chief of Staff Deborah A. Bonnani -- said the case shouldn't proceed

"Attempting to demonstrate that the (Terrorist Surveillance Program) was not the content dragnet plaintiffs allege, or that the NSA has not otherwise engaged in the alleged content dragnet, would require the disclosure of highly classified NSA intelligence sources and methods about the TSP and other NSA activities," the Justice Department told Walker.

Some of you may recall the story of the female wolf from Yellowstone that had wandered down into Colorado in an apparent attempt at finding love and happiness on her own that I posted about awhile back.

It is with much sadness that I read this morning that she has been found dead

Are on the case. Sounds like the NSA has run amok. Or believes that Cheney is still running things.

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, according to government officials.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in "over-collection" of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to be unintentional.

[snip]

The overcollection problems appear to have been uncovered as part of a twice-annual certification that the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence are required to give to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on the protocols that the N.S.A. is using in wiretapping. That review, officials said, began in the waning days of the Bush administration and was continued by the Obama administration. It led intelligence officials to realize that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic.